Strawberry Lemon Cheesecake Muffins

This fun Strawberry Lemon Muffin recipe from Allrecipes reminded me of delicious, refreshing strawberry lemonade. But I spontaneously threw in a twist: cream cheese. I had some leftover Philadelphia Whipped Cream Cheese in the fridge and decided to drop a dollop of it in each muffin before it went into the oven!

The light lemon flavor in the muffin, the baked strawberries’ jam-like texture, and a bit of creamy rich cheese went really well together and turned into a delicious portable dessert/ breakfast. I usually think that cheesecakes are more cheese than cake which makes it too rich for me, but these little muffins are a bit more balanced.

Excited to try more recipes in anticipation of warm summer days, BBQs, and picnics!

Zuppa Toscana

I know eating at Olive Garden is not the coolest place to say you’ve eaten at, but I am absolutely in love with their Zuppa Toscana soup. It’s a creamy soup with collared greens, chunks of spicy Italian sausage, and slices of potato. I wanted to see if I could make it at home.

Yesterday night was perfect for some warm, rich soup…I live in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco, which doesn’t always live up to its name as you can see from the picture below. It was so cold and foggy before it even got dark!

View from my backyard

I scoured the web for a homemade version of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana and decided to try Cycle Michael’s Copycat from Food.com.

I quickly found out that the instructions from this recipe was not the best. Just a heads up, you do need a big soup pot (like the one in the photo) and a smaller one for later.

Start by browning the Italian sausage in the pot, I added a few slivers a butter so that the meat wouldn’t stick or burn. I bought Sweet Italian Pork Sausage from Trader Joe’s but I think spicy sausage would have been great and similar to the restaurant version. In retrospect I would have cut the sausage into smaller pieces.

Next add the chicken broth and water.

In a separate pot you want to cook your potatoes, minced garlic, and onion slices until the potatoes are soft. I actually cut the potato into thin slices instead of chunks because they cook faster and you won’t get a spoonful of potato later.

When ready add the small pot ingredients into the big soup pot. I also added turkey bacon that was baked in the toaster oven earlier. Sprinkle in salt and pepper and let it all simmer together to let the flavors really meld.

Lastly, the finally ingredients: turn to low heat and add kale first because it needs to cook longer to get soft or else uncooked kale is pretty tough to chew and tastes bitter. Slowly pour in the heavy whipping cream and heat thoroughly without it simmering or boiling.

The final product! It smelled really good and tasted amazingly similar to Olive Garden’s version, just a little more watery. I am assuming the restaurant likes to add more cream to make it richer, but I prefer to keep this healthier.

Now if only I could make their famous breadsticks at home!

Pan Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon

Brussel sprouts have a bad rap for being one of those vegetables hated by every 6 year-old out there, along with broccoli and spinach. I dared myself to try something different and I actually fell in love with this dish!

This is a great, easy recipe with only 3 main ingredients! I adapted this from FN: Pan Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon.

• 4 strips thick-cut bacon
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound Brussels sprouts, halved
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Take 4 strips of thick bacon and cook them at a medium-high heat until crispy. I used turkey bacon as a healthy alternative, but I realize that it created less bacon fat to cook the brussel sprouts with later. Minor set back…that’s what butter is for!

Transfer the bacon strips to a paper-towel. While the bacon was crisping up, I washed and chopped the hard stems off the brussel sprouts and split them into halves. Then, using the same pan, I melted butter. I tossed in the brussel sprouts and onions cooked it in high heat until the brussel sprouts were browned and a little burnt (about 8-10 mins). Brussels sprouts are like mini-cabbages with layers and layers of leaves, so even when they are split, give them enough time to cook thoroughly.

Tip: Apparently if you overcook them, they turn gray and soft. They will also develop a bitter, strong flavor and smell that is unappealing. 

I love the bright green color! I cut up the turkey bacon into little bits and sprinkled it back in the pan. Mix evenly and there you have it- a simply, yet sophisticated side dish/entree.

Give brussel sprouts a chance!

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

A few of my coworkers started “Craft Night” last year because we wanted to get together and do crafts and hang out outside of the office. Our occasional Girls’ Night In/ Craft Nights have evolved into what would be more aptly named Food & Movie Night (we got a little lazy on the crafting part)!

I had the pleasure of hosting this month and since one of my coworkers is vegan, I decided I might as well try my hand at a vegan recipe. I borrowed this awesome Vegan Chocolate Cupcake recipe from Oh She Glows.

As I started following the recipe I was skeptical and curious to see how these cupcakes were going to turn out. After all- a cupcake without eggs or butter?? Whaaaaaat?!

I christened my new Kitchen Aid Artisan stand mixer with this recipe- it was pretty great to have both of my hands free while the ingredients mixed smoothly and thoroughly.

A little bit of cocoa powder goes a long way- smelled so chocolatey! The batter came out a bit more watery and thin than what I was used to seeing in regular recipes.

Fill each cup about 3/4 full and they puff up really nicely with a glossy dome.

End result: let me just say, these little guys blew my mind- they tasted so good! I kept asking myself, “How can they be vegan?!?!?!”

They were much more light, moist, and spongey than traditional cupcakes- probably because of the oil and lack of eggs in the recipe. The chocolate taste was really rich and not too sweet. We just ate them plain with no frosting and it was a great healthy dessert.

Baked Spaghetti Squash

This is a basic recipe for spaghetti squash, you can add almost anything you want to it as you would with regular spaghetti pasta- go crazy! This medium sized bright yellow squash is a great low-carb, low-calorie, healthy alternative to pasta. The first time I tasted it was actually in grad school when we got to eat in the fancy faculty cafeteria for some special occasion, quite honestly I did not like it. But my health-conscious roommate at the time was obsessed with the stuff and convinced me that it was all sorts of awesomeness. So now 2 years later I decided to give it another try.

Recipe used: Food Network’s Baked Spaghetti Squash with Marinara (+ How To Video by Michael Chiarello)

Simple ingredients needed: black pepper, salt and olive oil + spaghetti squash.

Tools needed: baking sheet, foil, spoon, fork, and a heavy duty knife or clever.

This was a near-fail, but I didn’t realize that I did not have a proper knife for the job and it was quite a struggle….

But I did it! I cracked the sucker open and scraped out all the seeds and stringy stuff with a spoon.

Take each half and coat it generously with olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Then turn them facing down on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake for 30-40 mins at 450 F until the flesh is soft.

Beautiful! Remove it from the oven and let it cool just enough so that you can hold it in your hand.

Here’s the fun part: take a fork and start scraping the flesh out-layer by layer. The squash flesh actually becomes yellow-translucent “strains” of spaghetti! The spaghetti squash by itself is pretty bland, so you can add sauces, veggies and meats to it for flavor. Here I mixed it with some leftover (real) spaghetti and meatballs.

Bon Appetit!

Banana Cake

It’s really hard for me to eat fruit usually but I seem to love using it in baking, especially bananas! Yes, it’s another banana recipe but this time it’s banana cake. I’ve never made a banana cake before but it seemed fitting for the emerging Spring weather- something lighter and fluffier than banana bread. This recipe I used is from Allrecipes.com Banana Cake VI.

A few days before this idea hit me, my boyfriend was nice enough to go to the store to help me get some buttermilk for my previous recipe: Blueberry muffins, but he got me a huge carton of it! I had a ton left over so what was I to do? Keep baking of course.

This recipe was a bit labor intensive as it require 4 separate mixtures to be slowly combined together.

(From left to right: sugar and butter creamed, dry ingredients, butter milk, mashed banana mixture)

Mix mix mix! Mixing the good ol’ fashion way with my red spatula from Target. Good arm exercise at least.

Ready for the oven! I did not take a picture but I actually added some left over cinnamon sugar streusel from the previous “To Die For Blueberry Muffins”….I wasn’t sure what it would taste like so I only spread it on half of the cake. Turned out great though! I should have known….how can you go wrong with streusel!

Cupcake Tips from the Cake Boss

I came across this video on my Yahoo! home page and was like “ohhhh!” Some pretty useful tips I definitely want to remember next time I make cupcakes.

Cupcake Tips from the Cake Boss Article

Cupcake Tips from the Cake Boss Video

Note to self: invest in an awesome turntable.